Forget it
by Daria234
Summary: Two transgenics wake up next to each other, both with complete amnesia. Do they trust each other or kill each other? Or something else entirely? Some humor, action, angst, sex, love, not in that order. Max/Alec- NOW updated with a new chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Written for comment_fic on livejournal. Prompt was M/A with them not recognizing each other because of lost memory.

As they regained consciousness, each instinctively took a combat pose when they realized another person was in the room. They looked at each other, confused, desperate, trying to glean any information they could from the demeanor of the other.

"Who are you?" she finally sputtered, as they circled each other like feral cats, keeping an almost-safe distance as they paced a wide oval.

"I have no idea."

"Why am I not surprised," she said, wondering why she was rolling her eyes when she should be keeping her gaze on the places he could be hiding weapons.

"Maybe we know each other," he suggested.

"Maybe you're the reason I don't remember why I'm here," she spat.

"Maybe you're the reason I don't remember!" he growled.

"Maybe you're pretending not to remember to hide the fact that you're the reason I don't remember!"

He looked annoyed and said, "Maybe you're pretending that you think I'm pretending not to remember to hide the fact that I remember and you-"

"Shut up! Enough of this! Get out of my way so I can leave and I won't kill you," she said.

"Hey, for all I know, you're the one keeping me from leaving."

"Yeah, I have a feeling if I had ambushed you, I wouldn't be clueless amnesia chick right now," she said confidently.

"Why's that?"

"Because if one of us sucks_ so bad_ that he gets get wiped by his own memory weapon, then that loser has GOT to be you."

"Hey, maybe we're on the same side! Ever think of that?" he asked indignantly.

"What makes you think so?" she asked, just slightly less clipped in tone, as she looked at him, trying to discern something.

"Well, for one thing, we're in almost identical stances, moving the same way, too. And for another thing, even though I don't remember why, my body seems to be attracted to you," Alec said with a wide smile.

"Yeah, well my body seems to have a subconscious urge to punch your body repeatedly," she at once responded.

"Maybe your body needs to stop being such a tightass," he answered brusquely.

"Maybe your body needs to stop being such a DUMBASS," she shot back right away.

They both stared at each other for a moment.

He said, then, "This... seems familiar."

Softly, she agreed. "Yeah. Let's get out of here."

"Together?" he asked.

She shrugged noncomitally. "Sure. 'Til my body tells me to knock your ass into a gutter."

He smiled. "My body can't wait."


	2. Chapter 2

The two of them ran out quickly, but within two blocks, they were faced with masked guards armed with long-reach Tasers.

"This way!" she shouted, grabbing his arm, taking evasive maneuvers. She wondered if she would have to explain how to weave around to avoid being a good shot, but a quick glance told her that she wouldn't have to tell him anything that she knew.

Though it was still pretty confusing why they would both know it. And why they seemed about an equal match in the fight.

They would have reached a dead end in a corner alley a few blocks down, but with the sound of pursuers near, they instinctively leaped over the high wall and ran toward the wooded area near the river, knowing it would provide cover, an escape route, and a place they couldn't be followed - somehow they knew they could hold their breath far longer than they should be able to.

And after they swam a good quarter mile down river, they got out of the stinking polluted river and found an old building that looked deserted.

They were both coughing and wretching from the filthy water, but they crawled up toward the old brick building , silently checked that it was empty, and then entered.

It looked a place that people used to gather in, a restaurant or a banquet hall that has been in ruins for years. She nodded toward the back room, and after checking the kitchen was secure, said, "Who the hell were those guys?"

"How the hell would I know?"

"I assumed they've met you. Since they wanted to do you harm," she answered, not quite concealing a smile.

"More likely they were just desperate to meet someone with your kind personality."

She rolled her eyes and then gestured toward the sink. "Let's see if we can find where this used to connect to a water main. Maybe then we can clean up. I feel pretty gross."

"You look pretty good to me. Who knows, you might be the kind of girl who likes getting dirty."

"Maybe if you wash up, your stench will only make me vomit half my lunch."

"Is that any way to talk to a guy who's going to rip up drywall with you?" he asked.

Another eyeroll. But they got to work, and indeed had to rip up some drywall, and some heavier stuff, too. But they managed to make a temporary connection to the water line, and after a few sinkfuls of sludge, they had clean running water.

She held her hands out in a cup and then brought the water to her face. It was cold and perfect as it cleaned off the river muck. She took another hand-cup of water to drink and moved aside so he could do the same.

He drank and made a satisfied groan at the clean water. Then he started stripping off his clothes.

"Hold up, cowboy, what do you think you're doing?" she said with much sarcasm.

"Hey, maybe I am a cowboy," he pondered, not pausing his removal of his clothing. He added with a grin, "Can you picture me riding a wild animal, taming it, bringing it home and-?"

"I think any ranch would be too afraid you'd take sexual liberties with the livestock."

He muttered, "I think you're the one they'd send to scare the animals to death on the butcher's day off," but instead of responding, she turned away.

"Please, for all we know, we could be like a married couple or something," he said, teasing her for her sudden shyness at his nudity.

"No. There are some things too traumatizing to forget," she answered, still not looking as he splashed water all over his body to rid it off the smell and grime of the river.

Soon, he was finished, though, and he said, "Your turn."

She hesitated, then said, "Now you turn around."

"You really know how to take the fun out of a situation, don't you?" he said, but did as she asked and turned around, away from the sink. She stripped her clothes off and went to rinse off with the water. He was able to see just a hint of her motion, just a blur of graceful gestures the color of her flesh, in the reflection off of an age-blurred metal door opposite the sink. He realized that she would have been able to see him bathe the same way, and wondered if she bothered to.

When she finished, after a few awkward moments, he offered to search the place for provisions as she stood behind a counter, and he came up with some canned food that was not quite expired and a couple of aprons. They put on the aprons, and she was slender enough that it provided full coverage; he had no coverage in back but didn't seem to mind. They let their dirty clothes soak in the sink and then hung them up to dry. And they knocked open the cans with ease and sat on the counter enjoying their green beans and sweet potatoes.

"So. It's obvious we're alike," she said finally.

"That explains why you're so hot," he said, smiling.

"First of all, you're not all that. Second of all, do you even remember what you look like?"

"...No."

"You're incredibly ugly."

He grinned. "If I were ugly, you wouldn't say that I'm ugly."

"Maybe I'm mean," she smiled.

"You're definitely mean, I just don't see any advantage to you saying that I'm ugly if I actually am. Besides, you don't look at me like you think I'm ugly."

"Do I look at you like I think you're cocky and insufferable?" she said.

"Yep. So, point proven."

Another eyeroll. Then silence.

"So..." he said, realizing that neither of them really wanted to talk about what they had to talk about, "Why do you think people are after us? Do you think we comitted a crime?"

"I'm not convinced they're after us. They could just be after you," she pointed out.

"Or I could be an innocent bystander," he answered.

"Not likely."

"Don't I have an innocent face?" he said, smiling sweet and pure.

"Yeah, it probably helps you get away with a lot of shit you shouldn't," she shot back.

He turned serious for a minute. "It's possible. I'm a criminal. Or we are. I... "

"What?"

He looked up at her, uncertain if he should trust. But one of them had to, so...

"Back there, when they were chasing us," he said, "I was trying to get away, but... I was also thinking about how I could hurt them. How I could overcome their superior force, how I could..."

"Kill them," she answered, looking in his eyes.

"Yeah," he said, looking away, "And the things we can do - we're not normal. These are skills for killing."

She hesitated then spoke, "When I saw those guys in masks, there were like a hundred different images running through my head, in just a split second. Different scenarios of who they might be, what might happen next, how things might turn out. It was like.."

"Like you're programmed with tactical training or something," he said with recognition, wincing at the words.

"Or trained in it so much we can't turn it off, even if we don't know who we are."

They looked at each other. They almost certainly were connected. And since they were both trained in tactics, they both knew how foolish it was to trust an unknown person with knowledge of your own strengths. And they both knew that the other had chosen to trust despite what their tactical training told them.

"But we didn't hurt anyone," she said, "We could have, but we have control over how we use our ... skills."

"Maybe we don't control it," he said, for the first time actually letting her see fear, "Maybe we just go around killing. Maybe we've done things that were so bad that we had to forget them just to-"

"Or maybe someone's fucking with us because that's what people do when you're different," she interrupted. She might not know this guy, she might not be sure yet if she hates him, but she wasn't about to let him get trapped in some story that's liable to make him crazy.

He smiled at her, with gratitude in his eyes, and this time it was she who looked away. She wasn't all that comfortable with emotions other than annoyance, he noticed.

So he changed the subject, "So those guys, right? There were a lot of them, and they looked pretty high tech."

She frowned. "Yeah, we - we really shouldn't have been able to get away from them that easily. "

"Yeah, except that we kick ass," he grinned.

She smiled against her better judgment. And he said, "Hey, let's worry about that later. This place looks pretty secure, let's try and ask each other questions to figure out what we know about each other."

"Okay," she said, pretty sure that he was back in flirt mode but not sure she wanted to make him stop, "First, let's see if you can juggle," she said as she tossed him the empty cans, a little harder than she needed to.

He caught them with a false grunt and easily juggled them. "Okay," he said, "My turn. Can you put your head behind your legs?"

"Forget it, Romeo."

"Hey, it could give us valuable clues to our identities. You might be like a supersoldier with a day job as a gymnast."

"I might be a kickboxer, too, want me to try that out on you?"

"Would it be wrong if I said yes?" he said.

Another eyeroll.

"Fine," he said, "Can you sing?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. She tried, "La la la la la la."

He made a face. "You're definitely not a singer."

"Can you do better?" she asked.

"Let's see. Wait, I don't know any songs."

"Make one up. A NON offensive song," she specified.

"Why would you think I would be offen-"

"Just do it," she laughed.

He sang then, fairly well though not so impressively that it implied he was a singer:

"I met a girl today,

And she is full of mystery,

When she rolls her eyes,

I fear I'll soon be history."

She laughed then, and clapped. "I'm flattered, really," she said.

They kept up their game most of the night, from math problems to throwing accuracy to imitating accents to arm wrestling to regular wrestling.

It was the last one that made them decide to stop playing games.

Because as the two of them rolled around on the hard floor, it was clear that neither of them was actually trying to defeat the other - as proven by the lack of destruction to the surrounding building - but it was equally clear that they were indeed fighting for something. As they looked into each other's eyes to anticipate the other's next move, moving their bodies along each other's with only the thin and rapidly loosening layers of apron separating them, it was clear that the pushing and pulling was more than about antagonism. It was about testing and trusting and not trusting and trusting again.

And maybe it was about finding something that makes them feel like themselves, even though they had no idea who they were. They didn't know what the next day would push onto them, they didn't really know even if they were human. But at least they knew one thing. They weren't alone.

And the less and less alone they felt, the more okay it was that the wrestling became gentler and gentler. That elbow-hits became playful bites, which became slow kisses, which became two bodies, two maybe-people, entangled on the floor, forgetting everything but the feel of the other, forgetting what tiny little bit they knew.

When they collapsed afterward, breathless and sweaty and blissful, he whispered in her ear, "This feels right."

He wanted her to answer, wanted her to agree that in their real life, in their memoried life, they were certainly together. He wanted her to say that his body felt familiar, was a perfect fit. He wanted to know that he was the type of person who could be with a person like her, not monstrous or soulless, but someone loved and trusted. Most of all, he wanted to hear that she recognized something in him, something that convinced her that it was at least a possibility that they could share a life.

But he didn't hear that.

All he heard was an explosion and the sound of too many volts passing through their intertwined bodies.

It turned out those guys hadn't been all that easy to lose.

* * *

Author's note: idea originally written for a couple of different prompts at comment_fic on livejournal


	3. Chapter 3

They woke up in Seattle, in adjacent hospital beds.

She woke first. She looked down, saw the hospital gown. No restraints, little security. A civilian hospital?

She looked over and saw him still unconscious. "Alec!" she hissed.

He woke and sat up quickly. Like a good soldier. He looked around and let a hundred possible scenarios fly through his mind, thinking of how they had gotten there, who could have done this.

He looked at her, a little lost. "I remember you," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Good for you. Let's get out of here."

They snuck out carefully. Appearances could be deceiving, and it might not be a real hospital.

But it turned out, it was. Just a regular place with regular people who had a Jane Doe and a John Doe dropped off unconscious.

They said nothing until they arrived at the base. Back to their real lives.

Where Max was a general, fighting for the rights of her people. And all people.

And Alec was helping. As much as she let him.

And they were something like friends, something like antagonists.

They were greeted with celebration and questions. They didn't have answers, but when Max said "No time for briefings, now, let's get back to work," nobody argued.

It wasn't until Max headed off to do her rounds, her talks with all her lieutenants and her morale-boosters to the troops, that Alec managed to pull her aside.

"Max, we have to talk about this."

"Don't think so, Alec."

"Come on, we get amnesia, then we get attacked, then we have one great night-"

"Great for you, maybe," she muttered.

"Hey, I was there, I know you're lying. My bedroom skills were spot on. Not that we needed a bedroom but, -- wait, Max, I'm serious, who did that to us?"

"Alec, leave it to you to think this is about your bedroom skills and not about the big giant threat to us," she muttered, then paused and asked, uncertainly, "Alec, when we came back, did you have any, you know, weird scars?"

He stared at her. "No. Do you? Do you think maybe we were in a fight and they erased the memory?"

"No," she answered quickly, "And we'll find out what happened. Logan's looking into it - go tell him what you remember when you get the chance."

"That's it? Your ex-squeeze is looking into it, and that's all we're going to do about it?" he yelled.

She snapped in response, "What the hell else can we do! Now, let it go. And if you tell anyone ever -"

"No threats necessary, an amnesiac gentleman never kisses and tells."

She walked faster, still angry.

"Hey, I'm mad too," he said, "Some people did who-knows-what to us, and we're sitting on our asses like nothing happened."

"I told you, Logan's looking into it."

"Great. What about - what happened between you and me?"

"I said never talk about it," she said, still not looking at him.

He paused. "Do you -- Maxie, do you _blame_ me for what we did?"

She didn't answer. She had no idea what she felt about what happened, but she knew it complicated and that it churned her guts with uncertainty and that she kept thinking about it when she really needed to be focusing on winning the damn war.

He repeated the question.

She told him to shut up and leave her alone and walked faster, him trailing behind her.

He repeated the question again, louder. Louder and more outraged and more confused.

She spun around and said, "Yes." Then she walked away. It was a lie, but he didn't know that.

She knew he wouldn't follow.

She told herself Alec would get over it. That was always one of the best things about Alec - she never had to use soft and pretty words around him. She didn't have to use kid gloves with Alec, physically or emotionally. It was a big relief, most of the time.

But this time, Alec didn't seem to get over it. He didn't talk to her much. He gave Logan what he knew, and asked him for the next couple of weeks if there were any leads yet on what happened to them.

There weren't.

Max got a request from Alec to be transferred to the Midwestern front of the movement. He sent it to on a piece of paper delivered by Joshua.

Max approved it, feeling like she was swallowing a cold stone.

Three years went by. Some things changed, some things didn't.

They rarely had contact, except to discuss movement-wide initiatives and tactics.

The war wasn't going well but it wasn't going badly either. In other words, it was going long.

They both almost forgot that night.

Then Logan called them both up, out of the blue.

"There's a facility in northern Washington," he told them, "A few former Manticore bigwigs starting a new project. We just got the intel. And we know now what happened to you two that day you were abducted."

"What?"

Logan sighed. "You are really, _really _not going to like it."

"Tell us."

He told them.

"I'm coming back to Seattle," Alec said, frantic, throat too dry to say more.

He rode all night.


	4. Chapter 4

They decide to start with Lydecker, who, as it turns out, was still kicking around.

Max was looking forward to knocking the answers out of him. She seemed disappointed that he was happy to give them information.

He smiled at them and said, "Oh, I guess you're here about your kid."

* * *

Logan had told them that X-5's were being used to 'produce' more supersoldiers. Natural fertilization, followed by removal, implantation in willing and non-superpowered surrogates - in other words, women who wouldn't cause problems. And then after, the children were subjected to some kind of experimental treatment.

Apparently, someone had decided that the old batch of supersoldiers weren't obedient enough; better just to start over clean, they thought.

So she and Alec had a child somewhere.

Logan was able to find out that it was a son.

* * *

Lydecker had even more information. They had asked him to train the new batch, his being the expert and all. He had been surprised that anyone was willing to try again after all the spectacular Manticore failures, especially given the years and years of invested time and money it would require.

It turned out that the new investors were takings some shortcuts.

Rapid aging of transgenic children. The process was so full of bugs that they needed natural fertilization of the egg to help the survival rates. So they designed situations tailored to encouraging intimacy. And, for the most part, the experiment worked.

Adult supersoldiers in just a few years, with both physical and cognitive development rapidly accelerated.

The psychosocial development left a little to be desired, but really, how well-adjusted to quick-grow disposable supersoldiers need to be?

Lydecker decided that the project was beneath his moral standards. He left.

They made him repeat that part, actually. And yes, _Lydecker decided that the project was beneath his moral standards. _

So they had a son out there, and he was, for all intents and purposes, about fifteen or sixteen years old.

And they demanded Lydecker tell them where the facility was.

That's when Lydecker started laughing.

"This time, it only took three years to have all hell break loose. Shortcut, right?" he said.

The kids had broken out.

Alec and Mac looked at each other, glad that the kid was free, concerned about how to find them.

Turned out, wouldn't be a problem.

The kid had followed a bloody trail to Lydecker, having remembered him from his early childhood. Their son, it turned out, was an angry angry boy. He wanted answers about who he was, why he was being raised in a lab.

Lydecker raised his shirt then, and they prepared for him to take out a weapon. Instead, they just saw acid burns on his torso.

"Your son is not as pleasant an interrogator as you are," Lydecker grimaced, "Kids today, right? No manners."

"What happened?" Max said, voice less hard.

"Kid wanted answers. Bad. I told him whatever I could to make him stop."

"Which was what?" Alec asked.

Lydecker smiled bitterly, either in apology or triumph; with him they were sometimes the same. He said, "He wanted to know if he had parents. And why these parents would abandon him.... I told him about you, showed him your pictures, said you were last seen in the Seattle area. I told him that everything that ever happened to you was all your fault."

"You told him that to save your own ass? Or just to screw us over?"

Lydecker turned his lips up again. It might have even been with regret. "Don't say I didn't warn you. You want your son? Go back to Seattle. He's looking for you... Says he's going to kill you, going to avenge all the parent generation who abandoned their kids to be lab rats."

"You sons of bitches, this is all your fault!" Max yelled, "It was bad enough what you did to us, how could do it to a bunch of babies, two-year-olds?!"

Lydecker barked, "He's not two. He's taller than you. And you better be prepared to defend yourself, because unlike you, he hasn't been away from combat training to learn to politics and diplomacy like you two have. He's as strong as you, as fast, as smart, better trained, more unpredictable, and believe it or not, a shitload angrier than you are too. Be careful. And be prepared. In case you have to put him down."

"Put him down! Like he's an animal!" Max yelled.

"Let's get out of here," Alec said.

"You just want to leave Lydecker after what he did??"

"I want to find our kid, Max. Okay? And to do that, we have to go home."

She looked at him a moment and he wondered briefly if she was even the same person he left three years ago. But she rolled her eyes at him and stormed out the door, leaving Lydecker intact.

They spoke little on the way back to Seattle, riding full speed. The roar of the wind helped cover the noise of their thoughts.

It wasn't until they got back to Max's place that they had a real conversation about their son.


	5. Chapter 5

The first thing they do is call Original Cindy, Logan, and everyone else to get as far away as possible. Logan handles the arrangements, with objections, but Max finally tells him that she's about to get attacked by her own child and she's not about to put up with any arguments.

The two of them don't talk until they're outfitting Max's apartment to withstand the first few minutes of attack. It's pretty much the best they would be able to do on such short notice.

"We'll have to convince him," she says.

"If he can be convinced," Alec says, as a hundred possibilities run through his head, imagining what this son might be like. What he might look like, act like.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"He's probably as strong as us, as fast. And I think Lydecker was holding back about his abilities."

"You think he's more... enhanced than we are?" she asked.

"Possible. And of course there's the fact that he wants to kill us, while we care about what happens to him. Kind of puts us at a disadvantage."

"There are two of us," she retorted, "Presuming you don't fuck up."

"Yeah, I forgot, this is all my fault," he muttered.

She paused a long time. Finally she said, "It wasn't."

"What?" he asked, sure that the wind was making him hear things.

"Wasn't your fault. Sorry I said it was." She kept her tone even, not wanting to seem like she was asking for anything.

He was bewildered, for a minute. Everything he regretted about the past three years away, rushing into him. The weight of that truth on him, but the greater weight of misplaced guilt being lifted.

Finally, he said, simply, "Thanks."

He felt her body tension relax slightly and he knew that they would be able to get past it. At least as long as they had bigger problems to worry about.

"So the kid," Alec said.

"Our kid," Max said.

It still felt weird for her to say, and for him to hear.

"You think we'll be able to talk to him?"

"Any other choices? .... Didn't think so."

He hesitated but then spoke, "What if he's not, you know, able to be helped?"

"We find someone who can help better than we can."

"No, I mean, what if, you know-"

"Don't even think about it, Alec."

"Max! We have to think about it! He might not succeed in killing us, but what about what Lydecker said?"

"Now you believe Lydecker? Because last I checked he was still a total dick!"

"He said the kid want revenge on anyone he even thinks is involved with creating him!"

"Manticore used him, now he wants to take down Manticore. I understand the sentiment!"

"That's not-"

She cut him off and said, "All we have to do is explain to him that we didn't know about him, we didn't abandon him, that we hate Manticore too."

"Yeah, tell the crazy kid that he was conceived by two killing machines who wouldn't touch each other without amnesia, that'll clear his psych problems right up!"

Max paused, then said with just a hint of bitterness, "You wouldn't touch me without amnesia, huh?"

Alec was taken aback. "That's not what I meant."

"It's what you said. And it's mutual by the way. Very very mutual."

He sighed. "What I meant was, I would never touch you because I know you don't feel that way about me, and I would never want to hurt our friendship, okay? Is that clear enough for you?"

She was silent for a while. The she spoke, and Alec could hear her smile, "Yeah, it's clear. I'm just surprised to hear you talk like the card that comes with a Hallmark teddy bear. Guess your time away has made you soft."

He sighed, but was smiling too. "Feel better now that you've mocked my honest display of emotion?"

"Much.... But seriously, Alec."

"The kid."

"Our kid," she corrected again.

"Think how messed up we were, and then imagine rapid-development on top of it."

"So you agree. It's totally understandable if some people think he's having a hard time."

"A hard time!?" he said, "He's torturing his way to find the targets of his killing spree! Including us!"

"So we'll help him!" she snapped.

"What if we can't!"

"We will!"

"But what if we-"

"We will!!" she yelled, "And if you so much as think about hurting him, Alec-"

"Hey, I want to save him as much as you do!"

"Then don't even say it! Shut up and let's plan how to talk to him."

"After what? After we beat him in a fight? Doesn't sound like it'll be all that easy."

"We aren't going to hurt him, Alec," she said, determination sounding a lot like a threat.

"Yeah, I hope so too!"

"Fuck hoping, we are_ not_ _hurting him_."

He said, "We're soldiers, Max, you know that!"

"Not with him, we're not! Not with our-"

She didn't finish.

Alec closed his eyes. He would have given anything to be able to tell her that he was sure it would work out fine, that they would find their son and explain it to him and they would all work together to find the people that did this. But Max didn't go for lies any more than he did.

But eventually he asked her something that he knew they'd have to talk about. Because she probably wasn't even thinking about it.

So he asked. "What if he's like Ben?"

She waited, then answered, voice choking, "Ben was a good person."

"I know," he said, hesitant to say more.

She swallowed. "He's not like Ben."

"He could be," he said reluctantly, "He has half his genes."

"You have all his genes!"

"I know! And if I ever become like that I expect you to-"

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up Alec! You didn't know Ben, and you don't know me, so shut the fuck up!"

He did.

A few minutes later, she muttered, "Sorry."

"Me too."

"...He's not like Ben."

"I hope so too."

"We're not hurting him, Alec. He's our son. We'll stop him without hurting him."

"Yeah," he answered, unconvincingly.

"If you hurt him, Alec... you'll pay for it."

He sighed, knowing she meant it. "Yeah."


	6. Chapter 6

They were tense as they waited. Even Alec was silent from the weight of it.

The silence was broken, finally. By a young man swinging on a line right into their tall windows, smashing them and sending glass everywhere.

He landed and took off his helmet. Max sucked in a breath at how much he looked like them. His face - his eyes, his jaw, his nose - was like Alec's but with her mouth and her complexion, and his hair was black and wavy though short.

"Nice entrance," Alec said, "Very dramatic." Alec turned to Max then and added, "He gets that from you."

The kid didn't laugh. He pulled out a gun in each hand, sending the two of them jumping for the cover of the defense area they had prepared - i.e., the kitchen counter with lined with bulletproof stacks.

The kid must have brought a lot of weapons, because it was a while before there was a pause to reload. Max and Alec came out then and rushed him, going for his weapons first and tossing them out the window.

The kid was surprised; he wasn't used to these kinds of opponents. But it turned out that the new generations did indeed have some enhancements. He wasn't as fast or as coordinated as them, but when he managed to land a punch on Max's jaw, it flew her clear across the room.

Alec fought for real, then, or closer to it, and Max did too, getting up quickly. Even with the two of them, they could barely keep up, just being able to keep him from his weapons, but not really able to take him down with hand to hand. Max tried to use the tranquilizer gun they had prepped, but the kid managed to get it away from her and smash it against the wall, nearly dislocating Max's shoulder in the process. They kept trying to pin him, to hold him down, but he was going full force, for long minutes, far longer than either of them had ever had to keep up hand-to-hand witout a break.

They tried to yell at him, even as they started panting for breath, tried to tell him the truth. Tried to tell him that he was safe, that they wanted to help him.

He responded by trying to roundhouse them in their face.

Even with the two of them against one, it was vicious. Alec started fighting dirty, going for the groin, the neck, whatever was possible, and even Max's dirty looks didn't stop him. But the kid had ridiculous endurance, and they could barely stay alive much less take time out to yell at each other about methods.

Finally, after nearly an hour of struggle, the place trashed, the three of them sweating and grunting and exhausted, Alec and Max managed to pin the kid to the ground and keep him there for more than a second. Alec put the angle of his elbow on the kid's throat and used larger size to hold the kid's body down, his legs pushing down on the kid's to keep him in place.

"I got him," Alec said, "Go fix the tranq gun! Get more, whatever!"

"Alec," she said, "We both need to hold him down! He's too-"

"This is our only shot at not having to kill him Maxie!"

She looked in his eyes and nodded, then ran to get another vial and figure out a delivery system since all the darts had been crushed. The kid bucked and screamed nonsense and rage, trying to get out from under Alec, and Max hurried to the kitchen hoping to find something that could be used to inject the tranq. She was frantic, rifling through the drawers in the kitchen, when she heard a loud yell from Alec.

She looked up, and saw what happened. The kid had managed to get up, had nailed Alec in the side of the head. And the kid was using Alec's moment of disorientation to get hold of another weapon from a compartment in his boot, a sharp metal curve of blade that fit the kid's hand perfectly. As he stretched his arm back before the blow, the blade about to go into Alec's neck, Max saw a hundred different possibilities flash before her eyes, a hundred different ways this could end.

Almost all of them involved her losing Alec for good.

There was no way she was getting there in time. So, with a soldier's decisiveness, she rapidly grabbed a knife out of the drawer and hurled it toward the kid. As the knife left her fingers, she thought about the choice she was making and she wasn't at all sure she could live with it. But it was made.

But Alec always did like to question her calls.

Even as the kid was in a dominant position over him, he managed to grab the kid by the arm with the blade, and use the arm to leverage the kid away from the knife. His reflexes were fast, faster than the kid's, but not fast enough to do all that and avoid Max's knife himself.

Max felt a wash of cold and fear when she saw her kitchen knife go into Alec's chest.

She ran to him. Alec looked up at her, unable to speak, eyes apologizing for his failure, before rapidly losing consciousness.

The kid was standing near, looking utterly confused about what happened. Max looked up at him, eyes with fury that the kid had never seen.

"Why did he do that?" the kid asked her, honestly confused.

"Because he's an idiot," she fumed, "Now. Get . _Out."_

For a second it looked like the kid might try to attack her, but his confusion seemed to quell his rage enough to see that Max was looking particularly lethal all of a sudden. He ran out the window.

Max pressed on Alec's chest, leaning hard and desperate, trying to stop the bleeding.


	7. Chapter 7

Max sensed something was wrong when she heard a noise outside the movement's infirmary, which was nearly empty since there hadn't been violence recently in Seattle. She had carried Alec there after his injury, the only place where the doctors all knew transgenic physiology, and where Max was recognized as automatically being in charge of security.

Alec would survive the stab wound. He was going to be affected by the concussion he received when the kid whaled him on the head, but not for long. For a minute, while carrying him to the infirmary, Max had thought he might bleed out, right there in her arms.

She had been too preoccupied to notice that she was being followed.

Alec, however, was going to be all right. When Max heard, she smiled and said, "He must have remembered all the times I said I wanted to kill him, and decided not to deprive me of the pleasure." The gratitude in her eyes, however, let the doctors know exactly what she was thinking.

Alec went through surgery without a hitch and lay in the recovery room until, groggy still from anesthesia, he looked up at her, and said, "We'll find him Max. Don't worry, we'll find him."

"Yeah, we'll find him and give him a nice welcome home hug," she muttered with sarcasm.

Alec did his best to appear alert through the post-op haze. "No, you were right," Alec said, "We'll convince him."

Max said nothing. It was hard for her to see talking as a viable solution when her clothes were still covered with Alec's blood.

She could tell Alec was about to start and argument with her when she heard the noise outside.

* * *

It was just the faintest of motions in the shadows, but she had a lot more experience tracking than the kid had running. She caught up with him in the no man's land between Movement territory and Normal territory.

"I know it's you! Come out and face me!!" she yelled.

The kid stepped out of the shadows. "You're here to avenge your friend?" he asked.

"Maybe," she answered with narrowed eyes. She tried to think of the best way to play this. "Are you here to kill me for something I didn't do?"

The kid looked at her questioningly. At the apartment, he would have just attacked first and ignored the question.

Something was different, Max could tell.

"That building. That's where you keep the dead bodies," the kid said, fear in his voice but also challenge.

She knew then that he had looked in the basement window. At the morgue.

The kid thought Alec was dead.

She knew it was cruel not to correct him right away. But it looked like the kid felt guilty. Which was a lot more than they had even thought him capable of a few hours ago.

And the guilt was probably the only thing keeping another of the kid's damn guns out of her face.

She chose her words carefully to avoid either lying or telling the truth.

"He protected you, not caring what he lost," she said, matter-of-factly, waiting to see how he would respond.

"Why?! Why would someone do that!?" he screamed and put his hands in his face. Max could see then: it wasn't that the kid didn't know why Alec would do that for his son; the kid didn't understand why anyone would protect someone they didn't have to.

Even if they all survived the night, they would have their work cut out for them, she knew then.

But she wasn't exactly known for giving up on impossible wars. His guilt kept him silent as she explained it, as she reasoned it through so he could see how unlikely it was that she was lying, how much more likely it was that Lydecker lied. When she started to see his eyes soften she asked, "Have you ever killed someone before today?"

He looked up at her panicked, but after a moment he said, "No. I... thought I would be better at it. I'm supposed to be better at it."

"What do you mean better?"

"I thought it would feel ...clean. Like everything's murky but then you kill and the glass is clear.... That's what they always said killing would be like. A relief."

She asked him, "Do you feel... relieved that you killed someone?" She held her breath as she waited for the answer.

He was silent for a long time and then turned away as he started to weep.

Even Max Guevara couldn't pretend that wasn't happening.

She told him Alec was alive. Serious injuries, but alive and probably conscious.

The kid looked afraid to believe her.

"Believe me, this is good news," she said, "I guarantee, you do not want to live with the weight of killing someone."The kid paused and then rubbed his eyes. "I believe you, Max. That my life is not your fault. I won't come after you again."

As he walked away, the soldier in her knew she should feel relieved. She didn't.

"Wait! We can help you!" she said, urgency spilling more than she wanted.

He looked back, sad, hopeless. "I'm not really your kid, Max. I'm just something they grew with part of your DNA. I'll... find somewhere else to go."

She ran in front of him and put her hand up. "In case you didn't notice, this is the center of the transgenic resistance. Even if you don't ever think of me as your - family.... still. It would be my job to help you. And those kids who escaped at the same time you did? We want to help them too."

The kid looked up at her, seemingly stunned. "Really?"

"Really," she said, "Kicking ass and saving people are kind of what we do here."

The kid nodded slowly and then said, finally showing more emotion, "I've been really worried about them. We said we'd split up, but..."

"We will help them," she promised again, aching with gratitude that this so-called killing machine was, rapid-aging damage or not, capable of empathy and being reasoned with and being scared for the well-being of others. She knew it was irrational to feel such a wave of joy that he wasn't quite as bad as she feared or imagined, but it came anyway, and it's not like there was that much good new these days, so she took it.

She repeated, "We can help you. All of you. And I know you want to help your brothers and sisters and much as I did when I escaped."

Finally, he nodded, and walked back toward her. They walked together then, back toward the infirmary.


	8. Chapter 8

As Max led the kid- _her son_, she thought, disturbed but warmed by idea - back to the infirmary, she wondered about all she had heard about the kid. He seemed all right. She didn't see emotional problems, just a scared angry kid with a bad childhood, and she could sure understand being that.

She was careful with him, now that he was calm and, well, non-patricidal. She smiled at him and tried unsuccessfully to make small talk as they walked, but he didn't seem to mind her efforts. Eventually, she even got his name. "The other kids call me Torch."

"Torch, huh? Do you like that name?"

The kid shrugged. "Yeah. Got it 'cuz when I was one, I lit the trainer's hair on fire."

"On purpose?" she said, suddenly not sure if it's okay for moms to smile at things like that, but smiling anyway.

"No," he said, returning the smile, "But he was fine, so I didn't exactly get all mopey about it."

Max smiled. Again, she reassured herself. _Nice kid. Sense of morality. Confused and sarcastic and angry, but that's probably the correct response to life in this century, transgenic or not._ She almost wanted to reach out and hold his hand as they walked, but she was still a little afraid how he would react to sudden contact. _And wouldn't most teenagers be mortified at that, regardless of the normalcy of their upbringing?_ she thought_. Or should I think of him as a really precocious three-year-old? Is he scared to walk around, no one holding him, no one feeding him? How am I even going to know the difference between a murderous rage and a temper tantrum? If there even is a difference.... Damn,_ she thought, _How on earth am I ever going to figure this kid out?_ she wondered as they neared the infirmary_. _

_With time and strategy,_ she reminded herself_. Just like any other civil war, you take your family back with time and strategy. _Regardless of her thoughts, though, she kept smiling reassuringly to Torch.

Finally, they went reached their destination, the various staff and patients giving respectful waves to the general and her son.

The kid hesitated outside Alec's door. "Do you think...." he asked her, not finishing his question.

"He'll be happy to see you," she promised.

Logan was sitting by Alec's bed when they walked in. Alec cringed as he sat up and tried to smile pleasantly at his kid, but Logan had stood and given just a hint of frown, as he asked delicately, "Max, are you sure you want to-"

Torch lost it. "I knew it! You're all trying to destroy me!" he yelled as he lunged at Logan. Alec managed to get there in time to stop Torch from reaching Logan, though he tore a stitch (and without his enhanced healing abilities would have probably died from the impact on his recent injuries.) She yelled at Logan to leave, to get out of the kid's sight so they could calm them down, and went -again - to help Alec hold down a volatile child who was stronger than either of them. They were better the second time around, or maybe the kid wasn't really trying to kill them this time, but it still wasn't easy, and as they gave each other a quick glance, she and Alec both knew. This would be their life now. They would still fight the good fight, but they would also have to be there for the kid - for their kid - to protect him, and to protect others from him. To teach him how to live as a person and not just a weapon. And from the looks of it, it would be a heck of a lot harder for the kid than it was for the X-5's, and that was really saying something.

But it was clear. He was their responsibility, hers and Alec's. He was theirs, period. They were a family, now, and maybe they were bound with attacks and lab experiments instead of mortgages and diamond rings, but they would be stuck together, at each other's sides always. And she knew she should feel appalled at this, but somehow, as she felt Alec's strength next to her own, holding their son tight and safe, she was relieved.

Alec managed to get a hand free then and, eyes watering, placed it on the kid's face, a right hand cradling Torch's jaw and cheek. He tried to be gentle, comforting, to avoid making the kid think he was being attacked.

Instead, the kid froze. He looked at Alec in confusion, bewildered. Alec's chest tightened and it put even more pain into his wound, but all Alec could think of was that first time someone had touched him for a reason other than medical care or training, on a missions they had sent Alec on where some oblivious old woman had patted him on the cheek to say he was a nice boy. Alec remembered how strange and terrifying it felt, even as it had warmed him, made him feel like more than a carrying case for a blade and a bomb.

Alec said, then, voice breaking, keeping his hand on his son's face like his life depended on it, "Please let me act like your father. I know it's awful. Everything's awful, especially that it's me, and I don't deserve to be anyone's father, but please let me. Please let me, please let me, please let me...." he kept repeating.

Max was shocked that his voice seemed to soothe the boy - her son - and his bucking and rage turned to sobbing and thrashing, and then eventually to whimpering. They kept him on the ground, beneath them, a covering over him to serve as barrier between a boy and a world who aren't quite ready for each other. And as she thought about all they would have to do, all the things all three of them would have to go through, as she told herself - as she always did - to replace despair with determination, she wondered for an instant about all the possible ways this could turn out. And the soldier and the general and the realist in her knew that not all of them were happy, but there was a chance. They had a chance. And as her mind went through those hundred possibilities, there was one she didn't expect to even imagine, just the briefest glimpse of something like a fantasy passing through her mind as she continued to grip the arm of the soldier-son beneath her. And she was astounded when she realized that in her half-second fantasy image, she and Alec shared a full and happy home, and the boy struggling beneath her was just their first child.

As she continued holding him down, she was followed, shadow-like, by the image of this future her, this future them, by this fantasy of family. She tried to put it out of her mind, tried to bury it or laugh at it or ignore it, she tried to wash away clean that absurd and desperate image. She tried so damn hard, but she just wasn't able to forget it.


End file.
